We took a break from our national park hunt during the first week in July, deciding to spend the week — including the Fourth of July — visiting and reconnecting with wonderful friends in the small town of Troy, Montana, which included a popular vintage car show as part of

This stop was a crazy study of our Earth — including a supervolcano, volcanic hotspots, tectonic faults, and powerful earthquakes — as we visited Grand Teton National Park (#14 thus far), Yellowstone National Park (#15), and Earthquake Lake… as well as continuing our journey following the mighty Snake River. During

Just wow. This leg of the trip surprised and amazed us. Our venture to southern Idaho opened up amazing worlds to us — of wildflowers blooming in lava fields, of hiking to the top of a volcano, to climbing over rocks once covered but revealed through erosion, of witnessing the

Idaho has no national parks, and only a handful of national monuments (all located in the southern part of the state), but that doesn’t mean the state is not worth exploring. We found some beautiful places while visiting Coeur d’Alene, Sandpoint, McCall, and Boise. We stayed in a campground at

The Canadian Rocky Mountains of British Columbia and Alberta: Spectacular. Amazing. Breathtaking. Alluring. Gorgeous. Spellbinding. If you have never been, you must add it to your to-do list. Nature and God’s splendor are in full view in every direction as you travel through this land. We decided we had to

This stop had no national significance (though we did spend some time in the Colville National Forest and the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area), but we may have found our EmpoweringSites.com HQ… in the tiny town of Loon Lake. (You can learn more about our search for a new #HQ

Oh, the fun we had on this stop of the trip, including two forays into the mountains of North Cascades National Park, #13 on our list of national parks explored on this adventure — and one of the least visited of all the national parks. This isolated park in northern

We took a few days in Bellingham to visit Ran’s son and daughter-in-law and new baby, as well as do our usual romping around the surrounding natural attractions, including Deception Pass and Mount Baker. We started the adventure with a drive up to Mount Baker along Highway 542 (Mt. Baker

Continuing westward, we traveled to the Olympic Peninsula to seek out and explore the amazing variety of Olympic National Park, #12 on our list of national parks we have visited on this adventure. Of all the national parks, this one may offer visitors the most variety, including high, glacier-capped mountains, old

This stop was all about seeing two active and dramatic volcanic mountains in southern Washington. We traveled from Ellensburg (and the not so pleasant Yakima River RV Park) to Randle (sadly misspelled), traveling over the quite beautiful White Pass Scenic Byway (Highway 12), which offered us an early peak at